http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascitystar/news/opinion/6815036.htm
Posted on Sat, Sep. 20, 2003
Knowing God's mind
These fanatics feel compelled to inflict beliefs on others
By Bill TammeusThe Kansas City Star
Three recent and important news stories all have roots in the destructive nature of absolute religious certainty. They showed us again that people who think they know all the cosmic answers cause us monumental grief.
First was the emotional dispute about the Ten Commandments monument in an Alabama courthouse. Soon after that, Florida executed an unrepentant man for murdering an abortion provider. Finally, we marked the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
The common thread running through each story is the propensity of some people to claim to know the mind of God  not just in general but in remarkable detail. I'm not equating the results of the three main characters' astonishing certainty about such things. It would be ridiculous to put the turmoil created by Judge Roy Moore of Alabama on a par with the murders that grew out of the blind zeal of Paul Hill and of Osama bin Laden.
But in each of these cases, the root cause of trouble was an unwavering religious certainty. Moore, for instance, believed that his version of Christianity  one he's convinced everyone should adopt  gave him the right to undermine the United States Constitution. Hill believed his Christian faith gave him a right  even a duty  to kill people to get them to stop performing abortions. And he insisted others have a similar duty. Bin Laden believed that Islam, which he interpreted to suit his own ends of power and politics, called him to authorize mass murder to punish America and its collaborators.
I'm certainly not arguing against religion or people who hold strong religious beliefs. I count myself among such people. And that means I am seriously out of sympathy with the great satirist of a century ago, Ambrose Bierce, who, in his Devil's Dictionary, defined religion this way: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
But I am arguing that a lack of modesty about our theology leads us to ruin. To assume that we have been given or have invented or discovered complete religious truth for all people and all time is to abandon our responsibility to be discerning and to recognize our limits. It is, instead, to make an idol of our own powers. Careful religious people would  and should  call it blasphemy.
I can't explain how Moore, Hill, bin Laden and others achieved such certainty about their beliefs. Perhaps there is no simple answer.
Moore, for instance, grew up in northeast Alabama, where a fairly common coin of the realm is religious certainty. His brother Jerry told The Associated Press that Roy is a fighter. You don't push him, because he'll fight back. That may not be an altogether repulsive trait, except when it gets mixed with this description of Moore from Auburn University history professor J. Wayne Flynt: Roy Moore lives in a world where there isn't any gray.
Many reasonable people think allowing abortion to be legal is a terrible policy. But Paul Hill somehow adopted a position that said it's acceptable to murder people to stop it. Hill's theology  he once was a minister in a small Presbyterian denomination, which later disowned him (not the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.)  allowed him not only to adopt that bizarre and destructive idea. It also allowed him to draw sweeping conclusions about how God would treat him after he died.
The sooner I am executed, he said just before his death,
... the sooner I am going to heaven. I expect a great reward in heaven. I am looking forward to glory. I don't feel remorse.
Bin Laden, by all accounts, was a young hellion when he was in school in Beirut, Lebanon, in the early 1970s. It was only after civil war broke out there and his family insisted he move back to Saudi Arabia that he had some kind of religious conversion experience. Then, day by day, he became more radical, until he eventually was interpreting Islam's holy book, the Qur'an, to justify terrorism.
As I say, I know the problem is absolute religious certainty. What I don't know is how to prevent it or undo it once it appears. But because this kind of theological rigidity is among the most destructive forces loose in the world today, it's up to all of us to figure out how.
To reach Bill Tammeus, a member of the Editorial Board, call (816) 234-4437 or send e-mail to tammeus@kcstar.com.